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Time Machine

S

slabman

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 13, 2008
67
0
Plano TX
Got the time machine working with my 500 external drive. My understanding is backups will be performed hourly, then daily for a month and then weekly 'till the disk is full. So far I've used 200 gigs on this drive....at this rate the HD will be full in a couple weeks or so, meaning I won't have room for anything else on there. Is this correct?

Is there away to reduce the frequency of these backups without just turning the time machine off manually?
 
No, that's not correct.

The initial backup will consume as much HD space as is currently occupied on your internal drive. After that, only incremental backups are performed. For example, if you only change one file, only that file is added to your backup.

Also, Time Machine will perform a backup every hour, while allowing you to go back in time hourly for the past day, daily for the past week, and weekly for the past year, etc.
 
Over the past week it started at 185 GB of files and has now consumed 200 GB. At that rate I'm going to fill 'er up fast!
 
once the time machine disk is full, it will start deleting the earliest backups so there's room for the newer stuff. if that's not cool with you, get a bigger external hard drive.
 
Now how does that work? If I have a gazillion Gig HD, it may take longer to fill, but it will....and then I still have the same problem, don't I? :confused:
I want to be able to add photos and music to this HD too!
 
Eric, no, but why would that matter? My basic question is the same. Time Machine is apt to fill up my HD....it's just a matter of time. How can I prevent this?
 
slabman said:
Eric, no, but why would that matter? My basic question is the same. Time Machine is apt to fill up my HD....it's just a matter of time. How can I prevent this?
Click to expand...

I set up my external hard drive with two partitions. One section is for Time Machine, the other section is for my music and pictures. If you have Time Machine on a partition, it will only fill up that amount of space.
 
slabman said:
Eric, no, but why would that matter? My basic question is the same. Time Machine is apt to fill up my HD....it's just a matter of time. How can I prevent this?
Click to expand...
It's very odd that you would see an increase in 15 GB in just a matter of weeks, unless you were adding/editing some very large files.

However, to answer your question, not really, there is no way to prevent Time Machine from eventually utilizing the entire drive. That's simply the way Time Machine was designed and operates (and must if you want to "travel back in time"). If you don't want this, there are certainly other backup solutions. For example, you can create an exact duplicate of your internal drive using Carbon Copy Cloner.

EDIT: Or themoonisdown09's suggestion may be just what you need.
 
The hourly backups are overkill, and are meant for retards that completely delete a file or are really attached to past changes (which includes me, I have royally screwed myself before in this manner in a Video class using Tiger...) If you really want (or are dumb enough to need) hourly backups from now into eternity, you cannot get a drive that will ever satisfy your needs, as files will always be changing and thus eating space on the disk.

Me, I turn the hourly backups OFF, then manually back up whenever I feel fit, which is certainly not the idiot-proof, bullet-proof solution a backup should be, but then I do not fancy myself an idiot.

As for storing videos, as someone said, just partition it so some space is reserved for your media. Do not get too freaked out about it deleting backups, as you will have your system how it was for at least a few weeks, which is more than plenty.
 
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